How Apple's uncompromising frontman held us all in his thrall

COMMENT:FOR YEARS after Steve Jobs's return to Apple in the late 1990s, people would camp out overnight on the pavement in San Francisco to ensure a seat at his keynote speech at the annual MacWorld conference.

Camp out. In the cold. In January. To listen to a technology chief executive talk for an hour. Giving a keynote that was so integrally connected to one man that it was known as “the Stevenote”. One person who embodied more than any other in the industry both his company and the vision of his company. The brand: Apple.

Though Larry Ellison’s keynote at Oracle’s annual conference is always a highlight, it has never been the “Larrynote”. There was never a “Billnote” either, though Microsoft chairman Bill Gates gave the annual keynote at the now defunct Comdex computing and electronics show in Las Vegas (which had the misfortune to occur around the same time as MacWorld and was always bamboozled by media coverage of the Stevenote).

Writing about Apple was certainly different to writing about other technology companies once Jobs returned to the helm in 1997, after years away from Apple (running NeXT and Pixar, both significant in their own right).

About the only time in a technology journalist’s life when you’d be gazed at with the mix of envy and hatred reserved for those with backstage passes at a Rolling Stones gig was the moment you filed past the Mac Faithful to the press section in the front rows of the Moscone Center for the MacWorld Stevenote. Close to Steve! Close to, and often engulfed by, his infamous “reality distortion field”, which made his speeches mesmerising and convincing – a master’s sale pitch.

Having grown up in California, I remember Apple’s initial public offering, and the national idolisation of its two young millionaire founders, both not much older than me, Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I recall having the curious sense that a new era – of personal computing and rich young geeks – had dawned. But that was all pre-Stevenote – long before a tech-company founder could bring tens of thousands of people together each year to hang on his every word.

My first Steve-on-stage moment was the day his return to Apple was announced by then Apple chief executive Gil Amelio. It was a stunning and unexpected announcement. The Mac Faithful in the Moscone Center were close to tears. Some were in tears. It was the first mass Steve love-in.

The Amelio keynote lasted almost three exhausting hours. I only recall the brief talk by Jobs, about how a new Mac operating system would be forged, based on his NeXT OS.

It wasn’t long before Amelio was out and Jobs was back in the saddle at Apple. That’s when the Stevenotes really started. The presentations were meticulously co-ordinated, smooth and silky. Jobs always wore jeans and a black mock turtleneck. He often took a shot or two at then enemy Microsoft. He always ended by mentioning “one more thing”, which generally was the coolest thing in the talk.

The Stevenotes were helped by the fact that Jobs was regularly featuring groundbreaking technology. You would hear gasps from the audience. Often they were deserved. Sometimes they weren’t but, at the time, Jobs would make you believe wholeheartedly that they were.

Almost always, you left feeling you must immediately buy whatever had been demonstrated. I would force myself to wait at least a week, to let the reality distortion field dissipate and to reconsider whether I actually needed whatever had been on show. But as Jobs galvanised a once-dying company and released iconic tech product after iconic tech product – new Mac iterations, iPods, iPhones, iPads – inevitably things were bought, by me and by tens of millions of others.

Apple became one of the world’s most successful brands and most valuable companies.

Now that Jobs has stepped down from his chief executive role, I doubt the technology industry will see anything quite like the annual Stevenotes again, nor the fractious, brilliant, infuriating leadership that produced such extraordinary things, often against all market wisdom. You’d have to have another Jobs. Or the same Jobs, hale and hearty once again.

He will be sorely missed as Apple’s uncompromising frontman.